Everyone Likes To Think They’re Good At Love

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Stop being good at love.

Everybody likes to think they’re good at love.

When you’re 16 and in love for the first time, you like to think you’re good at it… you’ve got it all figured out. Until you don’t. You then spend from ages 16 to present, trying to piece a puzzle that people have never completely solved. I have made some good attempts and done my fair share of trying. So much so, that I did it for other people.

Once upon a time, I was good at love. I was the freaking sunshine because I tried so hard to be that. I was the best not-girlfriend because I was just cool with everything. I was the bigger person because I just didn’t want to fight about anything. I was good at love because I drove four hours to tell someone how I feel about them. I was good at love for all the wrong reasons.

I let people sit back while I said ‘oh here, hey, no I’ll do it’. I let people walk all over how I actually felt because it’s just nicer to walk on sunshine, than it is to walk on this hard ground. I was only good at love because I thought it was better than the alternative – the heart-wrenching (literal pain in your heart), confusing, frustrating, maddening thing that is the real thing. The real-life love that you risk your heart and body on. The terrifying ride you send your heart on because the benefits are so. damn. good. Wakin-up-in-the-morning-next-to-a-face-you-love good.

Being good at love was only being in a place that I was familiar with. Being in love is an unknown place and we fear the unknown. We fear what we can’t see and hold and touch. In a world made of material things, we are scared of a thing that we can’t take a picture of or document or put down on paper. Being good at love is only as good as what you can reach. Being in love is reaching a little bit beyond that, and then some more, and then some more. It’s putting one step in front of the other without knowing the mile ahead.

Stop being good at love. Nobody gets it right all the time. Just make good choices. Let somebody love you. Let it be hard. Fight for your voice. Always have a voice. Also, fight for what you believe in. Take a shot at it. Raise your glass to the unknown and make plans with it.

Stop being good at love, just be in love.